In the current Economist there is an excellent (and long) article on what the development community has tried to do for Africa, the lessons learnt, and what is needed going forward. The article is a good synthesis of much of the recent academic research, but is also full of very telling concrete examples and tidbits. One of their stronger arguments is that size does matter in development, and that grand macro-solutions can often fail to address the nagging micro-foundations and constraints.

The Economisthas a large and very interesting piece on the migration of World Bank thinking towards recognising that 'institutions' are important.

Part of the difficulty, as Dani Rodrik of Harvard University points out, is that typical measures capture institutional outcomes, not institutional forms. The “rule of law”, for example, measures how secure an investor feels about his property. It tells us little about precisely what makes him feel that way.

IMF Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, IMF Head of Macroeconomic Studies, just released a working paper returning to the contentious question of whether or not aid leads to growth. Entitled Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?, the paper finds no robust evidence linking the two. Additionally, the authors challenge the Burnside and Dollar claim that aid works best in good policy environments.

Lots of hype, started well, ended in disappointment – well maybe not officially, but at least that’s my view. Had heard great things about “The Girl in the Café” – the new HBO/BBC romantic comedy set in the upcoming G8 summit and packed with development economics and social commentary – and through the first 30 minutes everything was going fine. Then came the long unoriginal speeches and a focus on the lacking convictions of the delegates instead of the severity of the problem at hand.

“Some people fear the economic threat from China. Others fret about expensive oil. With the skill of an accomplished arsonist, China has now poured gas on the flames of these separate anxieties, turning two medium-size fires into a single inferno.”